Presenting The New National Curriculum: National Literacy & Numeracy Strategies.

Narrator

My role was to deliver a seminar/workshop to inform fellow Supply Teachers of what was involved in the National Curriculum’s new National Literacy & Numeracy Strategies.

Situation

It was back in 1999/2000 that the government’s Department for Education & Employment (Dfee) launched its new update on the National Curriculum’s National Literacy & Numeracy Strategies. This involved the biggest shake up in the way these subjects were required to be taught since the launch of the National Curriculum to schools in England and Wales under the Education Reform Act 1988. These changes came along with numerous in-service training days for teachers as they all worked hard to understand what was what.

However, in the world of the supply teacher, this training was not accessible due to the temporary nature of a supply post. A few years on from this launch, for many schools as well as teachers (supply), this lack of training was a problem. In recognising this my agency called upon me (being an experienced supply teacher as well as being versed in the changes as a result on “having to keep up” because of my tutoring business) to design and deliver the workshops for the supply teachers of that agency.

Additionally, I was to work on this project with another experienced supply teacher who was also an assessor of a university teacher’s training course. We had no previous knowledge of each other before this. Fortunately, we got on well and became firm friends and took it in turns to meet at each other’s house as we progressed the training from the designing through to delivery.

There was to be 4 workshops in total, delivered once a month, over a 4 - month period. The workshop was to take place in a meeting/board from of a business centre and was to be delivered to about 15 supply teachers.

The supply agency also needed this done to show that it was offering training to the staff (to maintain accreditation with the REC) and allof the teachers were anxious to attend as the new National Literacy & Numeracy Strategies had caused them a lot of difficulties.

Task

Our aim was for the supply teachers to have an in-depth understanding of the aims, structure, assessment processes and levels of attainment (for the children) for the then new Numeracy and Literacy Strategies of the National Curriculum.

The success criteria were as follows:

That teachers could:

Define what the National Literacy Strategies (NLS) were.

Explain the structure of both the Maths and English NLS.

Compare the New Curriculum with the old one.

Understand how children were to be assess

Understand the levels of attainment that children can achieve.

Actions

1) Firstly, we met up to decide on what our aims and objectives were and how many sessions we would need to achieve this.

2) Then we met with the agency to let them know how we proposed to work with them both in terms of the content we would deliver, how we would deliver it, how long each session would be and how many sessions we would need.

3) Once agreed, we then proceeded to plan the sessions.

4) We decided to deliver the sessions via a series of PowerPoint presentations.

5) We then divided the information into 4 parts and did a PowerPoint for each part.

6) Following this, created a set of notes for the participants (based on the PowerPoint)

7) Finally, we compiled a small information pack of relevant information, contacts and links for them to further or deepened their understanding.

Results

The expected outcomes were that the teachers went away achieving a greater awareness of the contents, structure and delivery of the National Literacy & Numeracy strategies. the updated National Curriculum.

They felt more confident about teaching and participating in assessments at school.

The unexpected outcomes were that a few teachers felt that we relied too heavily on the PowerPoint to deliver the information and felt that we should have delivered a more practical workshop rather than a lecture.

Another unexpected outcome was that we were not surprised that the feedback above as, we that designed the course felt that we spoke about it in too much detail and would have been better off creating activities such as games or puzzles or quizzes to increase interaction, participation and enjoyment of the process of learning.

Reflections

As we felt we had lectured in too much detail, next time, we would have spoken less but build some activities around the information to enable the participants to engage in a more Kinesthetic way. Or by enabling them to digest and then share small parts of the information at a time. Enabling them to practice sharing the information with others whilst learning themselves.